That about summed it up. Brock tipped his head, leaned the back of his skull against the house, and breathed deep.
“So what happened?”
“A lot.”
He laughed again. “Sounds normal. What are you going to do?”
Brock squeezed his eyes shut and shoved a hand through his hair. In the next moment, he gripped both arms of the chair and stared out into the night. “I don’t get constellations. Why, when what we see is so amazing, are the stories we tell so ugly?”
He felt his dad’s gaze. Could guess his confusion. Dad sat still for a few breaths, allowing the silence to sort through their sludgy conversation. Eventually he turned toward Brock and nudged his hand with a knuckle.
“What’d the other guy look like?”
Brock glanced at his hand and tucked it into his lap. “Just the dashboard of my truck. Not a scratch.” He pushed out a single laugh. “Hardly fair, right?”
“Guess it’s better than hitting a brick wall. Or, you know, whoever you were mad at.”
Unthinkable. Even when he’d literally shook with confusion and anger, what he wanted most was to hold the woman who’d set fire to his emotions. Strange. Only in that moment did that realization hit him.
“I don’t know why our stories come out the way they do.” Dad settled back into his chair. “Seems true to life, though, don’t you think? But here’s the thing: I’m sitting here under the same sky you are, looking at the same stars you’re seeing, and I see something amazing, just like you. Maybe that’s something to think about. The stories up there, they’re not all great. But beauty shines forth from the darkness. Maybe that’s what we call redemption.”
Brock swallowed. “Does that mean we ignore the ugly stories?”
“No. I think that means we acknowledge them and then stand back. That’s where the real wonder is. What man has twisted, God has redeemed. Really, that’s quite something.” Dad shifted again, this time to place a hand on Brock’s shoulder. “And if we’re really talking people here, son, and not stars, I want you to know that’s how I see you. I am amazed at the man you’ve become, and proud doesn’t even begin to touch what I feel concerning you.”
Brock sniffed. “I really made a mess of my life for a while. Broke you and Mom’s heart.”
“True enough. But that’s not what either of us see when we look at you.”
There were no words. Emotions flooded—humility and gratitude and a fresh sense of wonder.
“Listen, Brock. I’m not sure what happened with you and Cheryl, but I do know that God has gifted you with a heart of enormous compassion. That’s why you love what you do here at the ranch. Sometimes it’s easier to give compassion to those whose troubles fell upon them undeserved. But those who’ve, from our perspective, tangled themselves up all on their own—they need compassion every bit as much.”
You who are without sin, cast the first stone…
No one did. Because you can’t grasp a stone while keeping a grip on grace. One or the other must stay on the ground.
Blinking, Brock stood. His father met him on his feet and put one arm around him, and Brock moved to meet him in a full hug.
“I don’t need to know the details. Just know that your mother and I are praying.”
He didn’t wait for a response before he clapped Brock’s back and moved away, leaving Brock to study the sky.
The beauty put him on his knees.
~26~
Endless silence enveloped her apartment. The sludgy black kind that told her this was her life. Forever. Through burning eyes, Cheryl let her attention drift from the letter she was rewriting. Back to where she’d been when this whole Ferris wheel started—quitting. It had to be the right thing to do. She couldn’t go back to pretending anymore.
She could hardly function. Drunk didn’t last long enough. The highs didn’t either. Reality waited after every hit, every numbing binge. That reality screamed into every pore of her existence: unforgivable.
God would always be angry.
Brock had melted the ice, and even with his rejection—which she’d known would come—she couldn’t summon a new cold front to numb her heart. So there she sat, no longer indifferent, shivering in the slush of what remained, and without a notion as to what was next in her pathetic little life.
If only she could stop feeling again. Or stop living.
Yes. Death, come, deliver your black relief.
How many times had she embraced that possibility, and with it a moment of relief? She could not count them. But the possibility brought only a wisp of hope, because on the heels of such thoughts came the ugly warning of what lay beyond the grave.
The Judge. He would look at her, rage seething in His glare. She heard the gravity of His voice, imagined the knife of His words falling upon her soul.
Your sin lies before me. You did not do enough.
Forever condemned. She could not face that. Death was not an option. Apparently, neither was life.
She scanned the skyline beyond her window. Lights glittered in every direction, a unique beauty she’d never seen until she’d moved to the West Coast city. So vast. So many opportunities. Cultural diversity. Activity. Cheryl sat, and for the first time in years, she let the view take her on a personal history.
Dad had pushed her toward law. Granted, he’d wanted her to go to the University of Wyoming. Not a chance. If she was going to move from Hayden, she had determined it would be as far away from her dad as possible. That left either the West or the East Coasts. So the negotiations ensued. He’d pay so much if she got accepted. Undergrad at UCLA it was, with the aim at continuing into law school. Dad probably had been banking on her not getting accepted into the UCLA law program—their qualifying percentages were pretty narrow.
Cheryl had made it her life ambition to prove him wrong. And then, to do as far as possible the opposite of what he’d wanted within the parameters of their agreement. He pushed for entertainment law or intellectual property. She pursued criminal justice. He campaigned for internships in private sectors. She only applied for public-practice experience. He wanted her to move back, to take the Colorado or Wyoming State Bar. She refused, planted her single taproot in California soil, and didn’t budge.
If all of that had been what she’d actually wanted, it would have been great. But defiance for simple defiance sake didn’t work out all that well. And the turn in her focus from simply practicing law to paying out meager peace offerings to the Great Judge twisted dislike into misery.
Brock’s surprise at her chosen career niggled at her as she stared through those memories. What if she had stood up to her father on the things that had mattered to her, rather than manipulating as much money and frustration out of him as possible, just for revenge?
Perhaps her life would look very different right now.
Opportunities—thousands, possibly millions—literally spread out beyond her window in the vast sea of people and buildings and lights, yet none of them called to her. In the reflection of all that she’d lost, both within the past week and over the past decade, all of the beacons that littered the semidark skyline were gaudy flashes of false hope.
She’d left her real self somewhere behind. Possibly dead. Certainly unrecoverable.
Pushing aside the keyboard at her fingertips, she folded her arms and laid her head against them.
Where is hope?
Shutting her eyes, she let the words circle as if a prayer. No, not really a prayer. From her, those went no higher than the lofted ceiling above her head. God didn’t turn his ear her way. He simply couldn’t. The holy has nothing to do with the unholy. The righteous would not soil Himself with the stained.
And yet…
Ethan hadn’t been an ideal man. He lived free. Brock said he too had been rebellious. Yet he lived unbound. Even her father, whom she knew to be a failure in many ways, seemed to live beyond the prison of guilt. And Andrew…
Was this freedom only to men? Or perhaps her sin was beyond the
reach of grace. The latter seemed most likely. Who could forgive such an act?
~*~
Brock paused in the midst of the swirling rush around him. A monotone voice blared over the intercom, calling a name that meant nothing to him. People moved as though the world would shut down if they didn’t reach their gate in the next breath. But in the midst of the scurry, Brock’s reality slowed, focused, and steadied.
The little shop would be crazy expensive. All airport boutiques were.
Red roses say I love you.
He’d heard somewhere a while back that if you wanted to reach the heart of a woman, you had to speak her language. Which meant that something he may see as insignificant, and maybe even a bit of a waste, wasn’t really a waste at all.
So he’d purchase a red rose bouquet.
It’d be a start. Maybe. He hoped.
~*~
Cheryl started, her rounded shoulders jerking before she lifted her head. Brushing the side of her face that had been plastered to her folded arms, she looked around.
Something had jolted her awake, which was interesting, as she hadn’t realized she’d dozed off.
The skyline beyond her desk remained much as it had been in her last moment of consciousness—a million different lights gathered like a chorus in the night sky. She couldn’t have slept for very long.
She was checking her bangle watch when the sound of a knock against her front door filled her home. Again. That was what had startled her awake.
After a glance to the door, she went back to her watch. Ten thirty. Who would come to her door at ten thirty?
She pushed against the desk and stood, stretching her neck from side to side in an attempt to relieve the tightness in those muscles. Foolish woman. She had a bed. A good one. There was no reason to fall asleep at her desk.
Inhaling, and still stretching, she shuffled toward the front door. Her neighbor, a man in his forties who still partied like he was in college, had people in and out of his home like he had a revolving door. Most likely, one of his many guests had the wrong apartment. Annoying, but harmless.
But she’d check the peephole just to be sure.
The hallway, what she could see of it, rested vacant. She could see the wall across the hall, and nothing moved to the left or right. With both hands against the door, she was about to push away when a flash of color drew her attention to the carpeted floor outside her entrance.
Red.
Her breath caught, and a wave of chills rushed over her shoulders and down her arms.
It could be a mistake. She could be imagining. Or misunderstanding. Or…
She unlatched the dead bolt and reached for the doorknob, silencing the possible explanations. With a tentative pull, she opened the door and crept toward the papered bundle on the floor.
Roses. A bouquet of red roses lay on the ground at her threshold.
Brock.
The name caught in her throat, a silent sob capturing her whisper. He’d sent her red roses. She knelt, her hand trembling as she reached to finger the velvety petals.
“Hey.”
Cheryl jumped at Brock’s whisper, her eyes darting to the side of the hall. He stood, huddled against the wall on her side of the hallway, his expression tight with emotion.
He pushed off the wall and took a single step forward. “I wasn’t sure if you’d open the door if you saw me on the other side.”
Her bottom lip trembled, and she looked away from his face, back at the roses.
He’d come for her. She’d pushed him to the breaking point, and he’d come for her anyway. He’d brought her a red rose bouquet and laid it at her feet, knowing exactly what the roses would say to her.
Wrapping one arm around her middle, with the other hand she pulled the flowers toward her chest. Oh God, why? I’m a wreck. He needs better than me…
You are not beyond My reach.
Yes she was. Cheryl trembled, and the tears she had locked away suddenly surged to her eyes. Surely, she was.
But here was this man…
A cry broke from her chest, shuddering through her shoulders. In a breath, Brock was there, on the floor with her, his arms tightening around her, his frame covering hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wetness covering her face. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Please…” Another cry cut off her words.
She was turned into his chest, and then the arms that had covered her were suddenly carrying her.
Love tore down the last of her walls. She’d never felt more exposed.
Or safe.
~*~
Brock had only heard that kind of depth in a sob once before. From her, in her nightmares.
Now he knew why. The last vestiges of anger evaporated, and his heart moved with a great ache. He only knew part of the history, but he could see the pain that lingered. What would anger do? Only damage. That was the furthest thing from his desire, because he loved her.
He’d nudged her front door shut behind him, not wanting her to feel like a sideshow as she broke down in his arms, and settled with her on her midcentury modern sofa. She turned into his chest, roses and all, and clung to his T-shirt, cries shaking her violently.
With a slight shift, he took the bouquet from her grasp and laid the roses on the spot beside them and then cradled her tightly.
“I’m sorry, Sherbert,” he whispered into her hair. “I came here to say that I’m sorry and that I love you.”
She sniffed, her head moving from side to side against him. “Why? You don’t have anything to be sorry for, and you shouldn’t love me.”
“I should have responded differently. And I shouldn’t have let you go.”
Two weeks ago, she would have either pushed him away or tried to seduce him, and either way he’d have been frustrated. There, in that stripped-bare moment, she only shivered, tears still soaking into his shirt. All of it was making sense. Her control-freak approach to her body and appearance, her coldness, the headaches, the nightmares…layers of damage that had only ever been smothered.
But they could talk about that later. Right now, she was overdue a good, hard cry.
As the minutes added up, Cheryl began to calm. Brock loosened his hold and rubbed small circles into her shoulder with his thumb. She stayed huddled against him, but he felt her tension uncoil as her body grew heavier against him.
Oh, to stay there…
“Cheryl.” His voice felt rough against his throat. Only then did he realize that he’d lost a few of his own tears.
Again she sniffed. “Yeah.”
“You’re tired. You should go to bed, okay? I’ll be back in the morning.”
She tipped her face up and pushed a hand against his chest so that she could look at him. Her eyes, the desperation in them, told him she wanted him to stay. For a moment, justification pushed against his conscious. He’d make sure she fell asleep. He’d be there if she had another nightmare. It wasn’t wrong. They wouldn’t cross any lines…
And then her expression changed. The request silently faded, and a look of respect took its place. She leaned forward, brushing her lips against his jaw. “You’re such a good man, Brock. I didn’t know men like you still walked the earth.”
He inhaled deeply as her arms tightened around his neck. “Sometimes. Not always.” He tucked his nose into her hair and breathed. “I’m all in, Sherbert. I want the good and the bad. All of it.”
She hesitated before her nod moved against him.
Good enough for tonight.
~*~
Cheryl eyed the soft crimson flowers soaking in a vase on her coffee table. She was glad no one had ever given her the clichéd gift before. They meant the world coming from him.
Brock sat across from her at her bar-height breakfast table. He’d brought bagels and coffee from a shop he’d found between her apartment and his hotel. He looked tired, but his eyes held hers with that look—the one she’d been so desperate to keep.
The impossible had happened. He knew the truth, and y
et he loved her.
She blinked against the tears. “How long can you stay?”
With one finger, he traced her hand. “As long as it takes.” His steady gaze locked on her, wordlessly telling her that he wasn’t leaving without her.
Love flooded her chest, so strong it actually hurt. “Brock”—she threaded her fingers with his—“why? Why me? Surely you know there’s better for you out there.”
“I don’t know that.” He tugged on her hand, and she left her stool willingly, moving so that he could secure her in his arms.
“But me?” she pushed. “You had no reason to fall for me. I’m…the ice princess. And a—”
“A sinner? Like me? And Ethan, and your dad, and the man who refused to be a father to your baby, and everyone else on this planet? Yeah, you’re one of those.”
She sniffed, burying her head against his neck even as she shook it. “You’re the famous Brock Kelly, King of the Slopes. Pastor’s son. Compassionate man extraordinaire. The pro athlete who gave it all up to run a camp for foster kids.”
His chest moved with a small chuckle. “You forgot reckless rebel who dishonored his parents, basically ignored them for four years, lived with a woman who was not his wife. Consumed with himself, with his fame, with the idea that every woman alive must be dying for one of his smiles.” He moved to frame her face, lifting it to look at him. “We’re both a mess. We’ll continue to be messy. I want us to be messy together. Can we do that?”
Even in the glaze of tears, which she simply could not shut off, she smiled. “I hope so.”
One side of his mouth lifted, and then he pressed a kiss to her temple.
Cheryl slid her arms around him. “My letter of resignation is done, and I sent it this morning. There’s nothing for me here.”
A pause extended, and he fingered the hair that hung loose around her shoulders as he seemed to align his words. “I think we need some time in LA. Just a little.”
“Why? My job is over. What about the ranch?”
“I’ve arranged for a small break. E and Brandi are adjusting to life with So-J, and they need the time off too. And I have my support agency looking for a manager for me.”
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